read all of shakespeare

Finished MacBeth in English class. I laughed during the final few scenes whenever people died. (I was really really hyper.) Oh, and the last day, I got to quote The Notebook because it related. :)

By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.

Double double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Out, damned spot, out!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is great. Finished it yesterday.

Started MacBeth in English yesterday. I was like the only one who actually read. I got through five scenes in act one and I understood it with very little help from the opposite page. (It’s one of those books where one side is Shakespeare and the other is translations of works and phrases by line but not every phrase/line. Also, on the first page that a scene starts, it has a summary of that scene. I didn’t read it.) The key to understanding Shakespeare:keep the characters straight, read fast for general meaning instead of minute details, and read the sparknotes afterwards to make sure you got it. That’s what works for me anyhow. If I stop to puzzle out little bits I can’t get it but I can get the general meaning. By the end of the play, I’ll get minute meaning, I just need to get used to the wording again.

My friend lent me a couple of her books of Shakespeare and I started The Tempest last night. I don’t get it at all. I’m checking out this book my English teacher recommended today for understanding Shakespeare (it’s a concordance) so that I can understand it.

For my own reference:

What I’ve read is in bold and what I know I have easy access to is in italics.

Histories:

2 Henry VI

3 Henry VI

1 Henry VI

Richard III

Richard II

King John

1 Henry IV

2 Henry IV

Henry V

Henry VIII

Tragedies:

Titus Andronicus

Romeo and Juliet

Julius Caesar

Hamlet

Othello

Timon of Athens

King Lear

Macbeth

Antony and Cleopatra

Coriolanus

Comedies:

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Taming of the Shrew

The Comedy of Errors

Love’s Labour’s Lost

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Merchant of Venice

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Much Ado About Nothing

As You Like It

Twelfth Night

Troilus and Cressida

Measure for Measure

All’s Well That Ends Well

Pericles Prince of Tyre

The Winter’s Tale

Cymbeline

The Tempest

Poetry:

Venus and Adonis

The Rape of Lucrece

Sonnets

`A Lover’s Complaint’

The Passionate Pilgrim

The Phoenix and The Turtle